18. Heidi
HEIDI
Aweek later, on the riverside path, Beau gives me what the printed records could not.
It is cold enough that our breath appears when we stop walking. Ivy sleeps beneath the stroller cover. Beau keeps both hands on the handle until I ask my first question.
Then he lets go and faces me.
“I don't want another summary,” I say.
“All right.”
“I want to know what she believed you were offering.”
“She believed I still wondered about us.”
“Did you?”
“Sometimes I wondered who I would have been if she hadn't left.”
The answer makes my stomach turn.
“That is not the same as wanting her,” he says.
“I know. Keep going.”
He swallows. The fact that he does not reach for the safer answer is the reason I remain beside him.
He does not pretend to remember every call.
He identifies what he remembers clearly: Celeste asking whether he sometimes wondered about their old life; Beau saying everyone wonders; Celeste complaining that the baby's father did not understand her fear; Beau saying he did; Beau telling her when I was asleep, working, bathing, or at an appointment.
“Did you tell her you loved me?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Did you tell her to stop imagining you with her?”
He looks toward the stroller. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because I liked being imagined.”
The river moves behind him, brown and quick beneath the wind.
“You liked her wanting you.”
“Yes.”
“While I was pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“While we were trying before that.”
His eyes close briefly. “Yes.”
I turn away because the honesty in his face makes me want to comfort him, and I am not ready to survive that impulse again.
“What did you get from it?”
“She made every answer sound important. If I remembered a doctor, she said nobody else listened. If I called back, she said I was the only person she could trust.”
“And when I trusted you?”
His voice drops. “I treated it as something I had already earned.”
That is the first thing he says that makes the hidden relationship feel connected to the man I loved, not separate from him. Beau has always liked being useful. I loved that about him. Celeste learned how to turn the need into applause.
He let her.
I ask whether Celeste spoke about replacing me.
“Not directly.”
“What did she say?”
He remembers a call in which she described the house they once planned and asked whether he still thought about the garden. He answered that he remembered it. He did not tell her the house he wanted was the one where I was sleeping.
“You kept both futures available in language,” I say.
“Yes.”
We stop beside the river. Beau does not reach for me when I cry. He waits until I take his hand, then holds it without closing the distance I have not offered.
“I am not comforting you,” I say.
“I know.”
“I needed to touch something that was here.”
“All right.”
I look at our hands. His wedding ring presses against my finger. Mine remains on my own hand because taking it off would have felt like a decision I was not ready to make.
“Did you notice I kept wearing it?”
“Every time.”
“Did that give you hope?”
“Yes.”
“You were not entitled to turn it into a promise.”
“I didn't.”
I believe him because he says it while looking at the rings instead of my face.
Belief is not trust yet. It is one usable piece of ground.
We walk back to the car. Later, outside my mother's gate, Beau unfolds the stroller while I settle Ivy beneath the blanket. When he straightens, I take his hand again. I can see he wants me to ask him inside. I keep hold of his hand for another second.
“What are you going to do with that answer?” I ask.
“Which answer?”
“That you liked being imagined.”
He looks down at our joined hands.
“I am talking to someone about why I needed it. At work, I have changed who takes calls and who can make decisions. With Celeste, there is no contact.”
“Those are actions.”
“Yes.”
“I asked what you are going to do with the answer.”
He thinks for long enough that I believe the response when it comes.
“Remember that being wanted is not the same as being loved. And being needed is not permission to leave the person I love.”
My fingers tighten around his.
“That sounds practiced.”
“The first half is. The second half is what I learned in the labor room.”
He does not say it gently. I hear the shame in his voice.
I release his hand and go inside carrying an answer that hurts and helps in almost equal measure.